The Perpetual Religion Thread

In all of the history you're drawing on and much further back, there has never been a time when knowledge was available to engage the universe and everything in it as completely natural phenomena. You either faked it with religion or just didn't know. Are you seriously suggesting it doesn't make a difference for that to be possible for the first time in history? If so, I'm kinda stumped as to why the crazy evangelicals are so worked up about it.

It's possible there's going to be future oscillations in the religiosity of the world, or the west, or the US, but I don't think it can stabilize around the same places it's been. Actually understanding stuff is kinda a game changer. The percentage of the population whose mind that changes will never be zero.

(I'm assuming this is the crux of your argument because the rest of your post is filled with fallacy and hyperbole)

If this is really the reason that we're seeing such a growth in self professed atheists, why has it taken so long? Origin of Species was 1859. Scopes was 1925. Evolution was being taught in schools for a couple generations before we saw the current growth in people who don't identify with any religion. Maybe you're right; maybe it's just now becoming a thing that people believe they can explain existence without God. I think you're massively underselling scores of human knowledge -- Plato was making a case against the gods in The Republic, so we've had solid arguments against the supernatural for a couple millennia, and religion is still around.

This could be a long-term demographic shift, and we might be on the cusp of it, you could be right. I just think it's too early to make that call, when we've seen similar cycles in the past.

In all of the history you're drawing on and much further back, there has never been a time when knowledge was available to engage the universe and everything in it as completely natural phenomena. You either faked it with religion or just didn't know. Are you seriously suggesting it doesn't make a difference for that to be possible for the first time in history? If so, I'm kinda stumped as to why the crazy evangelicals are so worked up about it.

It's possible there's going to be future oscillations in the religiosity of the world, or the west, or the US, but I don't think it can stabilize around the same places it's been. Actually understanding stuff is kinda a game changer. The percentage of the population whose mind that changes will never be zero.

(I'm assuming this is the crux of your argument because the rest of your post is filled with fallacy and hyperbole)

If this is really the reason that we're seeing such a growth in self professed atheists, why has it taken so long? Origin of Species was 1859. Scopes was 1925. Evolution was being taught in schools for a couple generations before we saw the current growth in people who don't identify with any religion. Maybe you're right; maybe it's just now becoming a thing that people believe they can explain existence without God. I think you're massively underselling scores of human knowledge -- Plato was making a case against the gods in The Republic, so we've had solid arguments against the supernatural for a couple millennia, and religion is still around.

I think you're conflating different things. Darwin isn't incompatible with religion, really, and even the defense in Scopes wasn't taking an atheist position. It was an argument about literalness and Genesis. Theistic evolution seems like the prevailing opinion among Christians outside the extreme Evangelicals, so it's not like accepting evolution has driven people to atheism.

How can you not consider that outside of the area of space we know and see there might be other peoples human or non human. Some may have been born long ago. Perhaps there is or are elder beings. They might be a wealth of knowledge or wisdom or strong beyond our grasp. They might even not care about us because we all drop dead a few years after our births.

IMO the bible is all fiction, but important. They were written by early peoples who had no science but had a lot of time to spend thinking of wise'nd things to say. So they wrote a lot. Then someone or some group decided to put all of the good lessons into the bible old testement and to a lesser extent the new testement.

I also believe this (call me crazy but) we all know we have minds, I use mine I can see I can feel emotion in it. Its not brain movement or sparks forming pretty pictures. How does that fit together with our scope of scientific logic? Therefore the fact and argument about the soul has some merit. I know that I have one, but I cant and wont argue it. Its just too much to put on a damn message board.

I dont think you have to worship god (thats the german translation of the word diety) or allah or jupiter but you have to recognize that we do not know every thing right now and we are very flawed. I would argue that we are more flawed now then we were 2000+ years ago in some ways. I would also argue that we should seek answers in the unknown or mis-understood. Perhaps there is some force that drives little pauper planets like ours to learn about the elders of such a life in a way where they dont have to bother with us and we either succeed or fail but they wouldnt have to sweat about it.

In all of the history you're drawing on and much further back, there has never been a time when knowledge was available to engage the universe and everything in it as completely natural phenomena. You either faked it with religion or just didn't know. Are you seriously suggesting it doesn't make a difference for that to be possible for the first time in history? If so, I'm kinda stumped as to why the crazy evangelicals are so worked up about it.

It's possible there's going to be future oscillations in the religiosity of the world, or the west, or the US, but I don't think it can stabilize around the same places it's been. Actually understanding stuff is kinda a game changer. The percentage of the population whose mind that changes will never be zero.

(I'm assuming this is the crux of your argument because the rest of your post is filled with fallacy and hyperbole)

If this is really the reason that we're seeing such a growth in self professed atheists, why has it taken so long? Origin of Species was 1859. Scopes was 1925. Evolution was being taught in schools for a couple generations before we saw the current growth in people who don't identify with any religion.

It's not just evolution. Evolution is a significant piece of the ‘what caused the world to be the way it is’ puzzle, but it's by no means all of it.

It's evolution and big bang cosmology and particle physics and general relativity and quantum physics and genetics and...

We now live in a world where we have a solid, naturalistic, predictive explanation for virtually all non-psychological human-level observations - that is quite recent. And we're expanding our knowledge into the psychological world, too; the places for god to hide are only going to get smaller.

Many Christians claim the story of Adam and Eve is allegory but I never understood of what. That the Christian god goes mental over those capable of questioning the rules? Fear him because his punishments are in a whole new league? He likes hurting the gullible and naive for his own amusement? Human progress depends on deceit?

I like to think that the story became corrupted over a few millenia. Get rid of the whole "original sin" schtick, and you actually have the foundations for a pretty good allegory about humanity coming of age.

Eden is a state of child-like innocence. The prohibition from eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not some arbitrary commandment of a vengeful god, but of a protective father seeking to protect his children. Once humanity knows of good and evil and how to tell the two apart, they can no longer be treated as children living under their fathers protection, but must leave the nest to pursue their own path. Kicking the kids out of the house doesn't always have to be punishment, sometimes it's for their own good.

I have no idea if my interpretation has any actual historical support, but I happen to like it.

Wow! I'd have never guessed that from the text itself. When I left home, I chose to do so and nobody was upset about me being able to do so. I was given cooking utensils and crockery as gifts, and was taught to cook a few years previously. Neither did my father mangle a pet and expect it to harass me. Neither was I blocked from re-entering the family home. And my father and I are fairly cold-hearted.

So now I know what the story is an allegory for, and it's a very liberal interpretation, as in a very loose interpretation.

Such an interpretation is also at odds with the tone of the Old Testament. Which leads to the bemusement of why a culture would write such stories.

I've always hated the allegory claim when it comes to the Torah. I was raised Jewish, and the impression I left with from the Shabbat service was that the first third of the service contained a whole bunch of prayers proclaiming god's greatness and kindness. The Torah and haftorah come out, and you get to hear about how god is a capricious and bloodthirsty asshole who supports the slaughter of all non-believers, and some believers. There's a discussion involving copious amounts of cognitive dissonance where people try to claim tht the previous stories are actually allegory and really mean something totally different. Finally, you finish up the service by proclaiming god's greatness again. The impression it left with me was one of weaponized faith. If we praise the giant enough and remind our children of the damage it can cause, maybe it will work for us.

Judaism, from my experience, seems to be a mixture of people who do and don't believe in a literal god, but I'm not comfortable connecting myself to a religion even on a cultural level.

I was raised Jewish, and the impression I left with from the Shabbat service was that the first third of the service contained a whole bunch of prayers proclaiming god's greatness and kindness. The Torah and haftorah come out, and you get to hear about how god is a capricious and bloodthirsty asshole who supports the slaughter of all non-believers, and some believers. There's a discussion involving copious amounts of cognitive dissonance where people try to claim tht the previous stories are actually allegory and really mean something totally different. Finally, you finish up the service by proclaiming god's greatness again. The impression it left with me was one of weaponized faith. If we praise the giant enough and remind our children of the damage it can cause, maybe it will work for us.

It's a hard film to watch, but God on Trial explores this theme through a group of Jews in a Nazi concentration camp putting God on trial for breaking the covenant. I highly recommend it.

IMO we are seeing growth in the number of self-professed atheists because Superstitionists are less in a position to murder us, Muslim countries excepted.

One reason I see modern wars as an often positive influence is their disruption of old structures where churches were powerful. When Kaiser and Tsar claim God is on their side and are then defeated, blowback against Superstition is a bonus. WW1 got many people to question authority, even though some proposed solutions such as Communism in Russia didn't work out as envisioned. Any amount of violence between religionists is fine with me because their actions demonstrate their real beliefs. It's "red on red" so the blame is all theirs.

Atheists are tired of being oppressed by people who invoke that which they cannot _prove_ exists in order to impose their sectarian social orders. We understand religion is a tissue of deliberate lies designed to exalt believers over the rest of us that they may rule and fuck us over. We don't care for that. I no more want to be ruled by Thumper or Papist than I want to be ruled by some witch doctor with a bone through his nose.

Some of us regard the beliefs of desert tribesmen and the tribesmen themselves with utter contempt and cold hatred because that regressive nonsense holds back mankind. Modern man should not cherish primitive cultures, at all, in any way. They are obstacles to the pursuit of truth.

what on earth is left with which to justify believing in the divinity of jesus?

Jesus is simply one of the innumerable ya-o-yorozu no kami. Same as Mohammad, the various prophets of Judaism, and a host of deities from other religions.

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Why would he say that, and also that he believes in the "Abrahamic god"

Holy shit, a practitioner of a faith that espouses polytheism, who is also married to a polytheist, and has said repeatedly that he recognizes the existence of different deities on this very forum, is capable of acknowledging the existence of different divinities.

What will he do next? No one knows!

If it's not the only god, it's not in actual fact the Abrahamic god, because the Abrahamic god says that there is no other god but him.

Also, I find it a bit rich that SituationSoap started this thread when he flew off the handle at me in another thread after I had the audacity to quote another poster who made the claim that he was an unfit parent.

If this is really the reason that we're seeing such a growth in self professed atheists, why has it taken so long? Origin of Species was 1859. Scopes was 1925. Evolution was being taught in schools for a couple generations before we saw the current growth in people who don't identify with any religion.

I spent much of my post before last exploring this issue.

Origin of Species wasn't the endgame, it was just the beginning. People didn't like it. They'd say, yeah a beak might get bigger, fur might get thicker, some creatures are extinct because they perished in the flood, but that doesn't mean god didn't create everything. They couldn't deny natural selection happened, but they could deny that it was historically true for everything. What's happened with a greatly expanded fossil record with some big transitionals (tetrapods, cetaceans, birds, hominids) and more importantly DNA for everything is that claims that anything other than evolution by natural selection is or ever has been at work are untenable. You can't have that conversation anymore unless you want to sit at the kiddie table with astrology.

That's had significant consequences. A lot of the atheists you see these days didn't get there gradually, or from a liberal church, they go from full bore crazy evangelical straight to atheist. The somewhat well known Brian Dalton has talks on youtube where he explains that he left the mormon church because archeological and genetic evidence showed that the book he put his faith in was absolutely, completely, unequivocally and entirely wrong. He had to take it all or leave it all, so he left. Hard to get stats on why people are atheists, but that kind of story is not in any way rare.

what on earth is left with which to justify believing in the divinity of jesus?

Jesus is simply one of the innumerable ya-o-yorozu no kami. Same as Mohammad, the various prophets of Judaism, and a host of deities from other religions.

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Why would he say that, and also that he believes in the "Abrahamic god"

Holy shit, a practitioner of a faith that espouses polytheism, who is also married to a polytheist, and has said repeatedly that he recognizes the existence of different deities on this very forum, is capable of acknowledging the existence of different divinities.

What will he do next? No one knows!

If it's not the only god, it's not in actual fact the Abrahamic god, because the Abrahamic god says that there is no other god but him.

3rd Commandment in Exodus. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The whole "Only one god" thing came later but the god of Abraham was just one of the local gods, most likely a war god of some type. The jews of the time were rather violent after all.

If this is really the reason that we're seeing such a growth in self professed atheists, why has it taken so long? Origin of Species was 1859. Scopes was 1925. Evolution was being taught in schools for a couple generations before we saw the current growth in people who don't identify with any religion.

I spent much of my post before last exploring this issue.

Origin of Species wasn't the endgame, it was just the beginning. People didn't like it. They'd say, yeah a beak might get bigger, fur might get thicker, some creatures are extinct because they perished in the flood, but that doesn't mean god didn't create everything. They couldn't deny natural selection happened, but they could deny that it was historically true for everything. What's happened with a greatly expanded fossil record with some big transitionals (tetrapods, cetaceans, birds, hominids) and more importantly DNA for everything is that claims that anything other than evolution by natural selection is or ever has been at work are untenable. You can't have that conversation anymore unless you want to sit at the kiddie table with astrology.

That's had significant consequences. A lot of the atheists you see these days didn't get there gradually, or from a liberal church, they go from full bore crazy evangelical straight to atheist. The somewhat well known Brian Dalton has talks on youtube where he explains that he left the mormon church because archeological and genetic evidence showed that the book he put his faith in was absolutely, completely, unequivocally and entirely wrong. He had to take it all or leave it all, so he left. Hard to get stats on why people are atheists, but that kind of story is not in any way rare.

If you don't have stats to back it up, you shouldn't make arguments like "people don't go there gradually, they go from full bore to straight atheist" because that's a narrative that (a) you've invented to support your possibly skewed world view and (b) dismisses what could be several other interesting possible causes.

What's more -- your argument that people go from hardcore Christian straight to atheist would correlate with my argument that increased levels of apostasy are as a result of the church and its incessant moralizing, not some meta-narrative that involves people suddenly realizing they can explain the world without God.

I'm up for anecdotal evidence here. Contrary to Megalodon's argument, I did not go from evangelical Christian to strong atheist all at once. Neither my family nor I were ever evangelical.

I was raised methodist, and my parents are still nominally methodists. We probably went to church once a month or so. I actually kind of remember it fondly, people were nice, and they sometimes served huge stacks of pancakes beforehand. I can't really say I ever "switched" — or, at least I can't say when it came — the whole thing just seemed a bit silly as far back as I can remember, and I didn't think anyone really took it seriously. Everyone plays along with Santa Claus, right? I was really into astronomy as a child — still am — thanks to Carl Sagan, and that probably played a part.

I will say that the argument of incessant moralizing rings true to me — the imposition of religion on myself and others is what I oppose, and have come to oppose it more strongly as time goes on. In high school I had gay friends who couldn't be who they were because of bigotry with very religious undertones. I don't care what you believe, just don't try to force me to believe it too. And don't try to censor me when I say it's all bullshit.

Went from being an evangelical gospel singer, to non-denominational, to believe in god but seldom go to a church, to you couldn't pay me to waste another day of my life with that nonsense. All spread out over about a 10-15 year period.

I'm up for anecdotal evidence here. Contrary to Megalodon's argument, I did not go from evangelical Christian to strong atheist all at once. Neither my family nor I were ever evangelical.

Same here. It was a slow process, one that continues today. Just yesterday driving in to work thinking on it I realized I've moved from someone who doesn't believe in any of the mythologies of religion but who thought there might well be a higher power we know nothing about and can't even begin to fathom to someone who not only doesn't believe in any of the mythologies of religion and who also thinks it's highly unlikely there's any higher power, afterlife, etc. of any sort.

I know that seems to be a fairly minor shift but it was kind of startling to realize.

On that note, maybe the fact of internet communication is the big thing here.

If I had grown up in the 50s-60s, I would have probably stayed where I grew up, and my main social gathering spot would have been centered around the church. I wouldn't have interactions with people of other faiths, and homosexuals would be quiet and in the closet (making it even more 'deviant' -- the church says it's wrong, and if it isn't wrong, why are they hiding?) So why bother questioning the religion -- there's nothing for me to gain.

The same still exists in small rural towns today. If you aren't in a church, you are likely socially isolated. Again, why not just go along with it and be part of a community?

Now that there's a way to "socialize" and interact without church involvement, you see people forming groups everywhere around lots of interests. This makes church-life significantly less important. This, in turn, makes people question if they need a church life.

(b) dismisses what could be several other interesting possible causes.

The last thing I would do is suggest there's only one leak in the dam.

SituationSoap wrote:

What's more -- your argument that people go from hardcore Christian straight to atheist would correlate with my argument that increased levels of apostasy are as a result of the church and its incessant moralizing, not some meta-narrative that involves people suddenly realizing they can explain the world without God.

On that note, maybe the fact of internet communication is the big thing here.

If I had grown up in the 50s-60s, I would have probably stayed where I grew up, and my main social gathering spot would have been centered around the church. I wouldn't have interactions with people of other faiths, and homosexuals would be quiet and in the closet (making it even more 'deviant' -- the church says it's wrong, and if it isn't wrong, why are they hiding?) So why bother questioning the religion -- there's nothing for me to gain.

The same still exists in small rural towns today. If you aren't in a church, you are likely socially isolated. Again, why not just go along with it and be part of a community?

Now that there's a way to "socialize" and interact without church involvement, you see people forming groups everywhere around lots of interests. This makes church-life significantly less important. This, in turn, makes people question if they need a church life.

On that note, maybe the fact of internet communication is the big thing here.

If I had grown up in the 50s-60s, I would have probably stayed where I grew up, and my main social gathering spot would have been centered around the church. I wouldn't have interactions with people of other faiths, and homosexuals would be quiet and in the closet (making it even more 'deviant' -- the church says it's wrong, and if it isn't wrong, why are they hiding?) So why bother questioning the religion -- there's nothing for me to gain.

The same still exists in small rural towns today. If you aren't in a church, you are likely socially isolated. Again, why not just go along with it and be part of a community?

Now that there's a way to "socialize" and interact without church involvement, you see people forming groups everywhere around lots of interests. This makes church-life significantly less important. This, in turn, makes people question if they need a church life.

And the answer for more and more is becoming, "Nope."

I think this is spot-on.

Like any other path, this is surely spot on for some--most likely those who grew up in very rural areas and small towns. Those of us who grew up in cities in that era--I'm thinking, not so much.

Contrary to Megalodon's argument, I did not go from evangelical Christian to strong atheist all at once.

Could you explain how that is contrary to my argument? I didn't suggest that's the only thing happening or even that it's the dominant flow for atheists.

Contrary was probably the wrong word. I personally don't fit the pattern you outline.

Neither do I. I just don't think it's negligible since it's so easy to find people for which it's true. It's also highly suggestive that rates of religion drop so much with education, especially in the sciences.

FWIW: raised in a nominally Christian (Anglican) household to parents who are essentially indifferent to religion. This upbringing included church on Sundays from age 0 to 8 (approx) with Sunday school. Went to Christian-denominated schools from age 4 to age 18, including mandatory church attendance on Sundays from age 13-18, and daily Christian services five days a week from ages 6 to 16, compulsory prayers (<5 minutes) seven days a week from age 13-18. Secular comparative religion classes from maybe age 9-13.

Never had any religious belief, never had any need for any religious belief, never understood the role god was meant to play, never found any of the supernatural aspects of the bible even remotely plausible, and to this day, I can't even begin to understand how people could have religious beliefs.

It's why I find the Flying Spaghetti Monster so useful. I believe that it gives the religious a taste of the incredulity I feel whenever someone tells me that they're a believer.

The religious mindset is simply alien to me. There's no common ground between me and the religious--no basis by which I might comprehend their world view.

People talk of the struggle to believe, but for me I felt it has been a struggle to become an atheist, but a very fullfilling one. Growing up in a small town in Norway there was never much pressure towards religion, since most Norwegians are not very religous, but I went with school perhaps a couple of times a year to church. Always found it extremely boring.

I was not babtized, but not because my family was completly anti religion. My mother did not care, but my father believed and still believes very much in God, but he did not have beliefs which fit in with organized religion. He was a new age guy. He made me believe in God, Jesus, ghosts, reincarnation and all kinds of supersitions stuff. Fortunatly there was no hell or the devil, he did not believe in that. But I never found belief comforting. Supersition was mostly scary and it did not feel good to have a person sitting in the sky watching your every move and judging you.

It was in my teenage years when I started reading a lot about physics, chemistry and later philosophy, when my belief in God faded. I think it was a great relief to not have supersitions. A lot of scary stuff went away. The problem though was that my gut feeling kept telling me there was a God. No matter how much I became convinced from a logical standpoint the gut feeling will never quite go away. It is almost completly faded, but it will grow stronger when life turns difficult.

I think we humans are preprogrammed to believe from our DNA. Some more than others. I am probably predesposed towards it and have thus have to keep convincing myself that there is no God. It is fairly easy to understand why. I do not think evolution favored people who thought life was pointless. Without God, I admit that life does not have much of a purpose. My way of getting around it, is to pretend that it does.

I think atheism gives a lot of peace of mind. You have to make the best of the life you have here and now and death is nothing to fear. There will be no judgement. There will be nothing. There is no hell to fear, you do not need to worry that your unbelieving friends will go to hell.

Just an observation that kind of popped up while I was showering; are there still any religions relevant that try to explain once-scary natural events? It's easy to write off Noah's Ark or burning bushes as something that happened a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but for the most part it's pretty easy to ignore the supernatural aspects of Christianity, Islam or Judaism during your everyday life. The same wouldn't be true if one of the primal tenants of your religion was that every time you saw lightning it was Zeus striking down some disrespectful mortal. Even the more successful newer religions like Scientology or Mormonism, as goofy as they are, don't try to make their believers have to write off common natural events as the work of the higher power. Surely the wealth, power and influence of the peoples that believe in a particular religion has a lot to do with it's success, but I can't help but wonder if the generic "believablity" on an everyday level isn't also somewhat of a factor.

Then again, I'm not sure believing rain is the tears of the Great Buffalo Spirit requires any more cognitive dissonance than magic underwear, thetans, or zombie Jesus.

I disagree. What we are programmed to do is trust and to learn from our parents and teachers, as children. I don't think religious faith is natural at all, it requires the establishment of a very particular degree of ignorance, lack of curiousity and subservience to unverified authority - natural to five year olds perhaps, but already becoming alien to ten year olds - because they are growing up.

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Without Goda god, I admit that life does not have much of aany purpose. My way of getting around it, is to pretend that it does.

(T,FTFY). Why pretend? If you give yourself purpose, you have a purpose. Or did you mean 'purpose' in the sense of some 'god-given' way? If so, why? There's no call to think that particular way. The fact that you still do just goes to show the ongoing effect of religious thinking. As always, religion is poison, and it poisons everything. Even the thinking of the careless atheist... (and this is clear from your phrasing, the first sentence of which I fixed for you!).

I disagree. What we are programmed to do is trust and to learn from our parents and teachers, as children. I don't think religious faith is natural at all, it requires the establishment of a very particular degree of ignorance, lack of curiousity and subservience to unverified authority - natural to five year olds perhaps, but already becoming alien to ten year olds - because they are growing up.

Agreed. Both my parents are not at all religious (my dad is vehemently against organised religion due to going to a Catholic school when he was growing up ), my grandmother isn't, and none of my friends were either. We had "scripture" classes but I never took them to be anything but fiction.

Why pretend? If you give yourself purpose, you have a purpose. Or did you mean 'purpose' in the sense of some 'god-given' way? If so, why? There's no call to think that particular way. The fact that you still do just goes to show the ongoing effect of religious thinking. As always, religion is poison, and it poisons everything. Even the thinking of the careless atheist... (and this is clear from your phrasing, the first sentence of which I fixed for you!).

This gets my vote. Indeed, I find erikengh's sentiment bemusing. I regard it as a characteristic of a human adolescent to start defining their own purpose, their own values beyond mere survival, what self-actualization means to them. Not being able to do this is so alien to me, I suspect those who can't are not really human, somewhere between instinct and enlightenment, merely talking apes driven by survival instincts and social programming.

The religious mindset is simply alien to me. There's no common ground between me and the religious--no basis by which I might comprehend their world view.

Do you know awe? Like you feel when face to face with something you really, really like and admire? For me it's the works of a couple of writers and a few poets that evoke it, Pachelbel's Canon, a few other such things. For other people it's bigger-than-life role models, perhaps a big brother who's also a fire fighter, or a dad who's a general. For yet other people it's meeting the Queen or Grigori Perelman or whomever.

Take that feeling, add in a potent batch of "will bail you out when in trouble" and season the whole thing with, you know, magic (that you believe in). I'd hazard if you can imagine this you're almost there. Oh, also, it's much easier if you happen to be impoverished, oppressed and threatened with pain or death.

The religious mindset can be wholly foreign to some people, but I would argue its constituents are present in the vast majority.

The religious mindset is simply alien to me. There's no common ground between me and the religious--no basis by which I might comprehend their world view.

Do you know awe? Like you feel when face to face with something you really, really like and admire? For me it's the works of a couple of writers and a few poets that evoke it, Pachelbel's Canon, a few other such things. For other people it's bigger-than-life role models, perhaps a big brother who's also a fire fighter, or a dad who's a general. For yet other people it's meeting the Queen or Grigori Perelman or whomever.

Take that feeling, add in a potent batch of "will bail you out when in trouble" and season the whole thing with, you know, magic (that you believe in). I'd hazard if you can imagine this you're almost there. Oh, also, it's much easier if you happen to be impoverished, oppressed and threatened with pain or death.

The religious mindset can be wholly foreign to some people, but I would argue its constituents are present in the vast majority.

The constituents may be present, but the desire to attribute them to religion is what is foreign. To this day 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' hit me like a hammer to the skull, but cannot for the life of me fathom why one would want to give thanks for that feeling to a deity instead of Jeff Mangum.

If anything it is much more comforting to know that a deeply fragile, emotionally frail man had this perfect moment of brilliance where he simultaneously overcame all his weaknesses' and channeled them into his art and crafted the most beautiful thing my ears have ever heard than it is to assume some omnipotent being effortlessly created this work as easily as blinking an eye.

God making amazing things is fucking boring. Man doing it is inspirational.

The religious mindset is simply alien to me. There's no common ground between me and the religious--no basis by which I might comprehend their world view.

Do you know awe? Like you feel when face to face with something you really, really like and admire? For me it's the works of a couple of writers and a few poets that evoke it, Pachelbel's Canon, a few other such things. For other people it's bigger-than-life role models, perhaps a big brother who's also a fire fighter, or a dad who's a general. For yet other people it's meeting the Queen or Grigori Perelman or whomever.

Take that feeling, add in a potent batch of "will bail you out when in trouble" and season the whole thing with, you know, magic (that you believe in). I'd hazard if you can imagine this you're almost there. Oh, also, it's much easier if you happen to be impoverished, oppressed and threatened with pain or death.

The religious mindset can be wholly foreign to some people, but I would argue its constituents are present in the vast majority.

I completely agree. However, first of all, I didn't say 'wonder' but 'awe'. I argue that awe is a core part of the religious experience, and if you've felt that even in a non-religious context you're that much closer to understanding a theist's perspective.

I chose this emotion in particular because I think it heaves closest to the religious perspective. Certainly many other emotions can be a part of the religious experience--adoration, trust, fear, hate (if something bad has happened and you blame $deity)--but they're not "core features", as it were.

DanaR wrote:

The constituents may be present, but the desire to attribute them to religion is what is foreign.

Could you expand a bit on what you mean by "desire to attribute them to religion"? See, above I chose a number of feelings I considered common ground, as in "you may not understand what it is to be a devout theist but if you've felt these you're at least 80% of the way there". Perhaps I chose the wrong set, or perhaps the set is incomplete. But with "desire to attribute them to religion" you seem to argue that there's a sine qua non in there, a kernel that separates the theists from non-theists; an interesting proposition.

My wife made the point that there is a level of luxury that we have in being atheist. If you live in a world of pain and suffering, where 5 of your 7 children died before the age of 5, where you are at the whim of the weather or warlords, you may be more tempted to want to believe that your suffering has a purpose, that it's part of a grand plan. You may also want to believe that you will see your lost children in a better place some day, and that they are in a better world free of suffering and with joy.

Basically, in harsh circumstances it may offer some level of comfort. In the first world, we have less need for this type of comfort by and large.

My wife made the point that there is a level of luxury that we have in being atheist. If you live in a world of pain and suffering, where 5 of your 7 children died before the age of 5, where you are at the whim of the weather or warlords, you may be more tempted to want to believe that your suffering has a purpose, that it's part of a grand plan. You may also want to believe that you will see your lost children in a better place some day, and that they are in a better world free of suffering and with joy.

Basically, in harsh circumstances it may offer some level of comfort. In the first world, we have less need for this type of comfort by and large.

The constituents may be present, but the desire to attribute them to religion is what is foreign.

Could you expand a bit on what you mean by "desire to attribute them to religion"? See, above I chose a number of feelings I considered common ground, as in "you may not understand what it is to be a devout theist but if you've felt these you're at least 80% of the way there". Perhaps I chose the wrong set, or perhaps the set is incomplete. But with "desire to attribute them to religion" you seem to argue that there's a sine qua non in there, a kernel that separates the theists from non-theists; an interesting proposition.

My wife made the point that there is a level of luxury that we have in being atheist. If you live in a world of pain and suffering, where 5 of your 7 children died before the age of 5, where you are at the whim of the weather or warlords, you may be more tempted to want to believe that your suffering has a purpose, that it's part of a grand plan. You may also want to believe that you will see your lost children in a better place some day, and that they are in a better world free of suffering and with joy.

Believing it has a purpose is the first step to not fixing it.

We can't blame people that had no reason to suppose it was fixable in the first place, but using the word "luxury" rubs me the wrong way here. Adopting a philosophy that helps us build a world where our children don't die isn't frivolous.